"--Britt says that Mister School-teacher there went to work and fell in love with Barrett's girl, and now she's goin' to marry a rich feller in the lumberin' line that her dad picked out for her, and instead of goin' to war or to sea, like--" Wade, maddened, sick at heart, furious at the old tattler who had thus canvassed his poor secret with his boss, had tried twice to cry an interruption. But his voice stuck in his throat. Now he leaped up, leaned far over the seat-back in front of him, and shouted, with face flushed and eyes like shining steel: "That's enough of that, you pup!" In the sudden, astonished silence the old man dragged his fingers through his grizzled whiskers and whined plaintively: "Ain't he peppery, though, about anybody talking? He shet me up, too!" "It's my business you're talking!" shouted Wade, beating time with clinched fist. "Drop it." MacLeod, primordial in his instincts, lost sight of the provocation, and felt only the rebuff in the presence of the girl he was seeking to attract. He had no apology on his tongue or in his heart. "It will take a better man than you to trig talk that I'm makin'," he retorted. "This isn't a district school, where you are licked if you whisper!" He sneered as he said it, and took one step up the aisle. With the bitter anger that had been burning in him for many days now fanned into the white-heat of Berserker rage, Wade leaped out of his seat. Between them sat the girl, looking from one to the other, her cheeks paling, her lips apart. At the moment, with a drunken man's instinctive knowledge of ripe occasions, Tommy Eye lurched out once more on the smoker platform and began to carol the lay that had consoled him on so many trips from town: "Oh, there ain't no girl, no pretty little girl, That I have left behind me." There sounded the clang of the engine bell far to the front. There was the premonitory and approaching jangle of shacklings, as car after car took up its slack. "Look after your man there, MacLeod!" cried the girl. "The yank will throw him off." "Let him go, then!" gritted the foreman. The flame in Wade's eyes was like the red torch of battle to him. Not for years had a man dared to give him that look. Suddenly the car sprang forward under their feet as the last shackle snapped taut. The boss was driven towards Wade, and let himself be driven. The other braced himself, blind in his fury, realizing at last the nature of the blood lust. A squall, fairly demoniac in intensity, stopped them. MacLeod recognized the voice, and even his passion for battle yielded. When the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt, baron of the Umcolcus, yelled in that fashion it meant obedience, and on this occasion the squall was reinforced by a shriek from the girl. And MacLeod whirled, dropping his fists.